Woodworms
by sincemarchoflastyear
Summary: The Marauders are bored in a classroom. It all started with a flying woodworm... and chaos ensues.


My first fanfiction, just a short story to get me started. Please review.

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James hated Care of Magical Creatures. Professor Kettleburn had a voice that made you feel drowsy, and that made it very easy for James to drift off while Kettleburn was lecturing the class. It was a warm sunny day and he wanted to be outside enjoying it with Lily. Instead, he and his classmates were trapped inside studying woodworms, whose only importance seemed to be in that they were- surprisingly- made of wood. So instead of listening to the lesson, he looked longingly out of the window and daydreamed about Quidditch. Suddenly something hit him on the head. James blinked and looked down. A woodworm sat wiggling on his right arm, then coughed up a few splinters onto his sleeve.

Although he'd barely heard a word of the lesson so far, he was reasonably sure woodworms couldn't fly. However, they could be thrown. His eyes narrowed. If they were sharing this class with the Slytherins, there'd be a whole host of possible culprits. But since he didn't have any Hufflepuff enemies, that narrowed the suspects down to three.

James looked up. Remus, being Remus, was paying attention to the lesson. Peter was swinging his feet rhythmically under the desk and quietly humming to himself, clearly rather bored. James moved on to the final (and most likely) suspect: Sirius Black, on the other side of the classroom, flirting with Mary MacDonald as though he hadn't a care in the world. And Mary was looking at James and smirking.

Retaliation was clearly called for, but how best to do it? To kill time while he thought of a better plan, he picked up the woodworm and lobbed it back towards Sirius.

It was an excellent shot; James wasn't on the Gryffindor Quidditch team for nothing. The woodworm landed on Sirius' shoulder, where it stayed, wriggling. Mary covered her mouth with her hands to stifle her giggling. Sirius reached a hand up and removed the woodworm, examining it critically. He didn't so much as glance at James, but his mouth twitched.

James decided he needed reinforcements. And since Remus was still disgustingly _paying attention to the lesson_, that left Peter. James moved over and tapped him on the shoulder.

"Peter, I need your help with a cunning plan."

He looked surprised. "What _now_? Why?"

"Because anything is better than listening to this lecture. And Sirius threw a worm at me."

"What do you have in mind?"

Fortunately for James, Sirius had become distracted by the various charms of Miss MacDonald and had missed their hushed discussion. So when Peter wandered over to them- apparently to ask a complicated question about the Charms homework, but really to subtly sprinkle splinters into Sirius' hair, causing Mary to smile- he was entirely unsuspecting. Peter wandered back to his desk, gave James a nod and tried hard not to look around.

Then James lobbed a worm back at Sirius. It landed perfectly in the middle of Sirius' hair, and happily proceeded to nibble on the splinters. And just as James had hoped, it was also nibbling on a fair amount of hair in the process. He carefully aimed another worm, which soon joined in the hair nibbling. Mary was smiling, and trying to not let Sirius catch on to the events unfolding right beneath his nose- or rather right on top of his head .

It took several minutes for Sirius to notice that his hair was now home to woodworms, however the real shock was that they'd managed to cover half his head in a brownish gloopy saliva. He looked disgusted for a moment, then gave a _Y__ou will pay for this_ glare to James. James had a brief moment of doubt; Sirius was almost as proud of his hair as James was of his own, and anyone messing it up was destined to suffer.

Still, the day he couldn't find a way to outwit (or out-hex, or at least outrun) his friend was the day he would die, so he returned Sirius' glare with a _Bring it on_ look of smugness.

The lesson went downhill from there, though it took the professor some time to notice that his classroom had been turned into a war zone. James and Sirius both recruited allies from their fellow students, and their tactics gradually escalated from lobbing woodworms to lobbing spells. Though initially the participants tried to be quiet, the noise level escalated along with the number of hexes being cast, until even the absorbed Professor couldn't fail to notice what was going on.

Unfortunately when Professor Kettleburn _did_ notice that something was amiss, it was at the worst possible moment. James threw a tickling charm that collided spectacularly with Sirius' blasting curse, and Kettleburn turned just in time to see the resulting explosion. James and Sirius were each thrown backwards, and James managed to slam his head against a desk. To make things worse, a box of woodworms fell off the desk and onto his face.

Dazed, pained, and covered in woodworms leaving brown ooze on his face, James looked blearily up at the shadow leaning over him and said with force, "Don't think you've won, Black, I'm not finished yet."

"Oh, I think you are, Mr. Potter," the shadow replied grimly, as James realized with horror that the shape of the face resembled their professor rather more than his best friend. "I think the pair of you are quite finished, and about to be given detention. _Again._"

"Oh," James said woozily, trying to think of a good explanation for his behaviour. Luckily for him, he passed out before he could come up with anything.


End file.
